Turbine engines, and particularly gas or combustion turbine engines, are rotary engines that extract energy from a flow of combusted gases passing through the engine onto a multitude of rotating turbine blades.
Turbine blade assemblies include the turbine airfoil or blade, a platform and a dovetail mounting portion. The turbine blade assembly includes cooling inlet passages as part of serpentine circuits in the platform and blade used to cool the platform and blade.
Investment casting is utilized to manufacture the serpentine circuits by developing an investment casting core. Fillets between the passages and supporting features of the core can create high stress points and increase the risk of breaking during the investment casting process or during engine operation. It is therefore desirable to develop internal cavity connections with larger fillet radii.